


Let the Sky Fall

by StormDancer



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Canon-Typical Violence, James Bond AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-20 22:36:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4804751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormDancer/pseuds/StormDancer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's blood on Zayn's hands. Harry likes to think it matches the blood on Harry's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let the Sky Fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beetheauxven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetheauxven/gifts).



> Thank so much to my beta of course, and to beetheauxven for the prompts. I was barely going to pinch hit, then I saw this prompt and knew I had to do it. I sort of took just the 'James Bond AU' part of the prompt, so I hope you like it!
> 
> Warning: this has James Bond canon typical violent. It's not graphic, but it is casual, and no one's innocent, especially not Zayn or Harry. 
> 
> Don't know, don't own, for any of the characters or media.

Harry makes him right away. It’s not that he’s the most beautiful man in a room full of the most glamorous people in Sao Paolo; it’s not that, in his simple black suit, he draws the eyes more than the most glittering jewels of the men women around him. It’s that there is a certain air a person who has killed before and will again carries with him, and he has it. It’s in his eyes, Harry thinks, something indefinable and irresistible. In his eyes and in the way he stands.

He slides smoothly into the seat next to Harry at the bar, like it’s a coincidence despite there being a number of seats open, as most of the patrons of the gala circle the room. He orders a Johnny Walker Blue on the rocks in a slightly north country accent, then turns to Harry.

“And can I buy you a drink?” he asks, and Harry doesn’t need his quick up and down look to know he’s made Harry too. Harry has the air as well, after all.

“Martini, shaken not stirred,” Harry tells him, and he raises his eyebrows but relays it to the bartender.

“I’m Styles. Harry Styles.”

He snorts. It’s somehow humorless, and somehow beautiful. “You really expect me to give you my name?” he asks, and Harry grins back.

“I know your name.”

“You know the name M gave you,” he replies, and turns to look around. “Nine o’clock, in red. Do you want to make the drop, or shall I?” 

“Why don’t you?” Harry proposes, and he nods, accepts the whiskey, and moves smoothly around the room to the woman in red.

Harry’s heard of him, of course. Heard the office gossip around MI6, how he’s the only one as good as Harry, but he hadn’t believed it. Now, watching as he talks to the woman, how every move of his body screams sex and seduction, how his fingers move across her back and the bug drops like a ghost into her purse, he believes it.

////

Later, after the woman in red and her boyfriend are led away, gauze stained red around the man’s arm where the bullet had sliced cleanly through, Harry looks up the name. Mot, M had told him, her face even. Death.

////

In Moscow, there’s an international ring of information dealers, who are selling British secrets. There’s a casino, a poker game, and Harry’s playing because he knows a bluff like the back of his hand, and he’s playing because two chances are better than one. Or that’s how it starts. The game ends with Harry’s gloating smile as he gathers a pot of chips and jewels and a certain flashdrive into a bag, and a responding smile that cuts as much as it concedes.

Harry’s taken into the back room, of course, by two thugs, accusing him of cheating and wanting the flash drive back. Harry leaves alone, two less bullets in his gun and the flash drive in his pockets.

He’s waiting outside the casino, in a sleek black convertible that’s almost as sleek as his hair. It’s the prettiest sight Harry’s ever seen, a beautiful man in a well-cut suit leaning against a powerful car. It looks like sex.

“They’re coming,” Harry says, and he nods.

“You drive,” he tells him, and tosses the keys to Harry in the same motion as he draws his gun and fires over Harry’s shoulder. Harry doesn’t hesitate to throw himself into the driver’s seat and take off. The security following them don’t get up.

More come, though, and it’s a chase through twisting city streets, Harry spinning the wheel and him half-hanging out the door, his gun shots coming regularly, the cars behind them spinning out as he goes.

“Tight,” Harry calls, and he pulls himself back in as Harry speeds into an alley barely wide enough for the car, too narrow for the big SUVs. He takes the time to reload the guns, and Harry spares a second to watch him, his hands moving capably over the metal. Long fingers, heavy rings, deadly metal. It’s a picture.

Gunfire meets them on the other side of the alley, because more of the ring must have been called; Harry spins the car towards the main road and leans back. He can almost see the bullets that fly over his arms, the ones that hit the men with the guns. He doesn’t bother to watch them fall, just shifts gears and takes them away.

“Hurt?” he asks, when they’re on the main road, and the Russians are far behind them.

“Little thing like this? Never.”

He grins, and it’s sharp as a knife. “You’re confident.”

“I know what I can do,” Harry tells him, and grins back.

///

“You work well together,” M tells them, looking up from her papers and raising her cat’s eye glasses to look through them. She doesn’t need the glasses, but she thinks it makes her look more intimidating. “I should start assigning you together more.”

////

“So, you have my number, you can call,” the woman says, as she watches Harry put his suit back on. Harry looks back, smiles.

“Of course,” he agrees. He won’t, but there’s no harm in letting her think he will. She was sweet, and a good fuck, and it was nice for a night. But that’s all it was. That’s all it ever is. “Sleep tight, babe.”

He runs a finger down her cheek, and shuts the door. He’s pulling out his phone as he leaves. M has a mission for him.

////

“So no one knows his name?” Harry asks, his legs swinging on the table.

“People know, he just doesn’t give it away easily,” Horan tells him, shoving him away from the motherboard he’d picked up. Horan knows everything, because all the agents come through to pick up their equipment, and people like to talk to him. He’s all the agents’ pet—both for his easy laugh and how he’s more likely to give them fun toys if he’s in a good mood. Harry’d figured if anyone would know, it would be him. “He knows there’s a risk. Not like you.”

Harry shrugs. He likes it when people know his name. And it’s not like there’s anyone else to risk with it.  “So do you know it?”

“Yep. Me, M. Payne, I think, but he knows everything.”

“He won’t tell me,” Harry muses. Payne’s honesty is probably why he’s got a desk job, but it’s also why he’s M’s second. “Anyone else?”

“Tomlinson did.” Harry nods, but doesn’t press that one.

Horan’s smirking, anyway. “Why do you want to know, anyway?”

“I’m a spy. It’s my job to be curious.”

“About your own side?”

“About everyone,” Harry tells him, and slides off the desk. “We’re off to Monaco. What do you have for me?”

////

It’s after Tokyo, a cybercrime that ends with his knife in someone’s throat and Harry’s gun to his partner’s head, that they fall into bed together. Harry doesn’t know why it took so long, because he handles a gun and a knife like they’re his lovers, lovers they share, and he takes shots over Harry’s shoulder and he wears suits like a second skin. There’s adrenaline in Harry’s veins and blood under his nails and he wants, and he doesn’t hesitate when he’s pressed Harry against a wall of his hotel room to kiss him, all teeth and tongues.

Harry rides him hard, sweat streaking his skin, his perfect hair a ruined mess, his rings digging into Harry’s hips to bruise, until he pants out Harry’s name when he comes. He blows Harry then, sinful mouth and looking up through his lashes at Harry, Harry’s fists clenched in luscious sheets, and there’s still a streak of blood on his cheek and his eyes are wild and he’s beautiful, and Harry comes on a wordless cry.

He shrugs his suit pants back on after, to go back to his own hotel room.

“What, no cuddling?” Harry jokes, from the bed. He’s settled, and he likes the sight of this, the Balmain suit and messy hair, his ink showing through the white of his unbuttoned shirt.

He snorts. “Get a mark for that,” he tells Harry, his lips quirked upwards. His feet are soundless as he leaves.

Harry laughs, and stretches out on the bed. It feels like a victory.

////

“You could have waited,” he says, when he meets Harry at the hotel. His hair’s perfectly in place, and his eyes are dark and mad, and there’s blood on his knuckles.

Harry shrugs. “I had to get out. Her goons were on me.”

“I was going to get them off you,” he snaps. Harry smirks. He just knows that there had been men on his tails and bullets flying, and he’d taken care of it.

“Or you get just get me off,” Harry suggests, grinning, and he rolls his eyes and leads Harry upstairs.

////

Harry traces his tattoos with his tongue, each one of them, memorizing. Tattoos are risky in this business, identifying for a man whose name Harry doesn’t even know, though he knows his body. Harry likes them, likes knowing they’re there. Likes solving this mystery, fuck by fuck.

He rolls Harry over after a while, retaliates by biting up Harry’s inner thigh. He presses hard on the bruises Harry got on their latest mission, and Harry comes with his hands on his cock and his mouth over the stitches where a knife had sliced just above his heart.

////

“So, Styles, what brings you here?” Cassidy asks, and Harry smiles, meets his gaze as he sips on his Krug 1928.

“I invest,” he replies, and sets the glass on a passing waiter’s tray with a murmured thank you. “I heard there were opportunities here.”

“There are definitely opportunities,” Cassidy agrees. He’s a handsome man, with the sort of arrogance that comes from a man who was attractive in his youth and powerful when he aged. It’s a sort that’s easy to fool. “Especially for those who understand the place for…squeamishness.”

Harry doesn’t react. He won’t trust anyone who takes the bait too fast. And he needs to keep Cassidy here longer, while he’s upstairs. Who knows how long that will take.

“Mercy has its place,” he agrees, smiling with all his teeth. He glances down, twists the heavy silver ring on his finger. “But that place isn’t always business, is it?”

“No it’s not,” Cassidy agrees. “We should talk more.”

“Let me buy you a drink?” Harry suggests. They’d found enough to know that Cassidy wouldn’t be averse. He shakes out his hair, leans forward, closer so his hair frames his face. “We could go somewhere more private.”

“Private deals must be discussed in private,” Cassidy agrees, his thin lips curved into a smile that doesn’t pretend not to be lascivious. Across the room, Harry can see him slip in. He’s in a three piece suit today that’s cut close around his narrow waist, his hair slicked back, and Harry doesn’t know why everyone in the room isn’t turning to stare, because he can’t look away. He nods, his gaze focusing on Cassidy’s back.

And it’s a job, and they sleep together when adrenaline is too much, but Harry shakes his head, his most enigmatic smile on his face. “Maybe later,” he tells Cassidy.

“I look forward to it.”

Harry finds him leaning against Harry’s car, a cigarette between his lips.

“Not going upstairs?” he asks. 

Harry shrugs. “Always keep them wanting more, right?” he asks, and opens the door to the Bugatti. “In case we need an in. You got it?”

“Key logger’s placed, and I have his hard drive.” He stretches his arm back over the headrest of the car, and it’s almost like his hand’s behind Harry’s neck. Harry doesn’t even shiver.

////

The arms dealers are in Dubai, for a trade show, apparently, and he’s going in as one of them. He’d gotten an unreadable look when Payne had told him that, and Payne had shrugged apologetically.

It starts well, and when he goes to the club with them, Harry’s not surprised. He follows a way back, and pretends to be watching the gyrating women with diamonds on their skin as he goes into the back room with the dealers.

Harry can’t see what happens there, but he can hear it, and imagine it. How he’s holding each gun, examining it, making sure it is black market. How he’s studying each of the dealers, that intent amber gaze, memorize their faces. How he’s smiling his knife’s blade smile, as he gets them all on his transmitter to where Interpol is waiting, listening. His voice is in Harry’s ear, in a language Harry only partly understands, but he hears the words he knows and knows they’ve got them. Without a gun fired this time, and Harry tries to be happy about that.

Interpol waits to descend until they’re outside, a sudden cry of “drop your weapons!” and “We have you surrounded!” that’s incongruous with the chatter around them, the sky-high buildings. Harry leans against a wall, watching, as they’re handcuffed. A job well done. Not exciting, but well done.

“Styles!” Comes the call, suddenly, and Harry looks up to see him gesturing as a motorcycle speeds away. One of them wasn’t surrounded, apparently, and Interpol’s too busy to get them, and all of that skims through Harry’s brain even as he’s moving, vaulting over the police cordon to get to the car he’s coopted.

The chase takes them out of the shining buildings, into winding streets that have Harry hopelessly lost, but the motorcyclist’s still in sight, and Harry gets off a few shots, but the car’s suspension is shit and he can’t stay steady long enough to get a proper shot in. They skid into another street, and another, his knuckles tight on the steering wheel, and Harry keeps shooting, keeps him on edge. Again and again, and they’re closing the distance, until finally Harry can see the shot and he’s about to pull the trigger—

The car twists suddenly, spinning to a stop and the shot goes wide, imbedding into the bricks. The motorcycle speeds away, and there’s no stopping him now.

Harry spins. He must be shot, Harry thinks, or something—but no. He’s fine. There’s no reason for him to stop.

“I could have had him!” Harry snaps.

He looks away, at the street in front of him. There’s a fucking kitten on the ground there, and as Harry watches, a little kid runs out to grab him, his brown eyes wide as he stares at the car for a second then runs away.

“A cat?” Harry demands. “Seriously? I could have had him, and now he’s gotten away.”

He shrugs, but when he meets Harry’s eyes, there’s no sheepishness there, nothing ashamed. “I’m not going to kill an innocent,” he says, and Harry snorts. It’s cute, that he thinks there are still innocents in this world. “I won’t.”

///

Harry wakes up that night, and he’s sitting on the balcony, a cigarette in his mouth, staring up at the sky. It’s that time between night and morning, right before the sun rises, and Harry doesn’t know why he’s awake, or why Harry is. But he tilts his head back and lets smoke fall out of it, and the desert’s spread out around him, and Harry gets up, pads outside.

Harry plucks the cigarette from his lips, takes a drag, before handing it back.

“You should got to sleep,” Harry tells him. “We’ve got to explain to M in the morning why one got away.”

He lets the smoke curl upwards, and his eyes are unfocused as they stare out into the night.

“Do you think, if I’d kept going, hit the cat—we’d have gotten him? Do you think because I didn’t, he’ll be the reason more people die?”

Harry shrugs. He doesn’t get the regrets, the way he always does this, goes back over everything he does. There’s no room for regrets or hesitation, no room for looking back, because who knows what will happen when you do.

“Probably,” he answers, honestly.

He nods. It’s not often that Harry feels old, and he’s not even sure he is older than him, but Harry’s been doing this than longer than almost anyone he knows, and he feels like it now.

“That’s what I thought,” he agrees, like he hadn’t expected anything else, and the smoke curls out from between his lips. He watches it climb, into the cool desert night, until Harry takes his hand and pulls him up, swallows the smoke from his mouth and stops him from thinking at all.

////

“One got away?” M asks, her voice stern. It’s cloudy in the windows behind her, the normal London weather. “That seems like an oversight.”

He opens his mouth, and Harry knows what he’s going to say, so he cuts in, hopefully smooth enough.

“We lost him,” Harry tells her. He’s always been a good liar, if never to M before. “He knew the streets better than us, and he was in a motorcycle. He’ll pop up again, and we can get him.”

It’s a long minute as she studies him, them. Harry doesn’t look to his side, doesn’t want to. He’s not even sure why he’s lying, just that he didn’t hesitate to, and that’s enough for him.

“Very well,” she says at last. “Eight out of nine is a good enough result to report, I suppose. You’re dismissed.” She waits until he’s out the door, then, “Styles.”

Harry pauses, looks back. She has her eyebrows raised, though she’s still looking at her papers. “Don’t lie to me again. I don’t care what happened. You know that. But I can’t help him if I don’t know.”

Harry grins. “Love you too, M.”

“Get out of my office,” she snaps, and he goes.

He’s waiting, leaning against Payne’s desk, talking to him quietly. But he looks up when he sees Harry, and his eyes are wide, softer than Harry’s ever seen him.

He falls into step with Harry as they leave. Harry’s heading to the gym, and he seems to be going in the same direction, because they walk for a while in silence, nodding at agents they pass.   

He pauses, outside the door to Q branch, and Harry pauses too, because it seems like he expects it.

“Zayn,” he says, suddenly. It sounds like a gunshot in the soundproofed underground rooms.

“What?”

“Zayn,” he repeats, and he’s smiling, almost, not like a knife but like a smile. His eyes crinkle when he does. Harry…doesn’t know what to think of that. “That’s my name. Zayn Malik.”

Harry turns the words over in his mouth. He’s not sure if it’s right, if he’s telling the truth, but he’s looking at him with a steady gaze and the hand Harry had seen him a man’s neck with once is tapping against his thigh.

“Zayn,” Harry repeats. “Not quite as ominous as the other one.”

“Not exactly,” Zayn agrees, another quick flash of a smile. “See you tomorrow, Styles.” He ducks into Q branch, where Harry can see him greeting Horan with a wave.

“Zayn Malik,” Harry says one more time, under his breath, before he keeps walking. Zayn Malik, who saves cats and shoots a man without hesitation, who smokes late at night and thinks about what he did wrong and thinks there’s still innocence in the world. Who Harry lied for, and he hasn’t lied for anyone but M since he was ten and his world died.

////

In Los Angeles, Harry is escorted out of a movie star’s mansion towards the pool, a gun to his head. It’ll all be very Sunset Boulevard if he does die here, he thinks, watching the edge of the pool near his feet. Very picturesque. Of course it would be, it’s Los Angeles.

“Do you expect me to talk?” Harry asks, eying the woman next to the man holding the gun. She’s the danger here, in her slinky black dress, with a massive diamond pendant right between her ample breasts. She’s beautiful, in a very overblown sort of way. He hopes the flash drive isn’t in there. It would be really inconvenient, given Zayn’s searching upstairs.

“No, Mr. Styles.” She smirks at him, and drags a nail down his cheek, digging in enough to draw blood. “I expect you to die.”

Harry’s thinking of a quip back when the enforcer falls, the gun falling out of his hand. Zayn stands over him, and Harry blinks. He was supposed to be upstairs. Harry was supposed to get out of this himself.

“Well,” Zayn says, looking at the woman, whose mouth has fallen open. “I expect him not to.”

A number of expressions flit over the woman’s face, and it settles on a terror that Harry expects isn’t all faked. “He was forcing me!” she starts, and pitches herself forward.

Harry’s at the right angle to see the glint of metal in her hand. “Knife!” he calls, but Zayn’s already turning, sidestepping neatly and pistol-whipping her so she drops, unconscious, to the ground. Then he turns to Harry.

“Alright?”

“Weren’t you supposed to be upstairs?”

Zayn smirks. “Aren’t you supposed to thank me for saving your life?”

“Well.” Harry steps over the woman, so he can wrap his hand around Zayn’s where it’s holding the gun. “What would you have in mind?” he purrs, licking his lips.

“Let’s have dinner.”

“Dinner?” Harry repeats. He wants to kiss the smirk from Zayn’s lips, wants to get him out of the tight suit he’d worn for breaking in upstairs.

“Dinner,” Zayn repeats, and runs his hand over the cut on Harry’s cheek, smearing the blood over his cheek.

“Yeah,” Harry agrees, vaguely. “Dinner.”

////

They have dinner. They have caviar in LA, kobe steak in Sydney, lobster in Rome. They have whiskey in Munich that spills on Harry’s stomach and Zayn licks off, his eyes dark as his tongue works over the tattoos. When Harry kisses him, he tastes of the whiskey and of something else, something rich and deadly, and Harry thought he knew everything about both of those things but he doesn’t know this taste at all.

////

“Why are you here?” Harry asks one night in Xian. Zayn’s smoking again, leaning against the window and staring out at the place where there would be stars if the smog wasn’t covering them. In the shadows, he can’t see the bruise over his cheek, the scar on his ribs from a Chechnyan terrorist’s knife that had cut him there a few days back and Harry had stitched him up before lying him down on the bed and fucking him until one of the stitches popped.

Zayn turns. Like always, in the night, out of his suits, there’s something young about him, or something that seems young to Harry.

“Because we had an assignment. Have you been hit on the head too often?”

“No. Why are you doing this?” Harry gestures around him, at the room. At the life.

“Why are you?” Zayn replies, because it’s a fight between them, always. A war, because Harry doesn’t know any other way to live. To fight M’s war.

“I never knew anything else,” Harry shrugs. “My parents died when I was ten, and my sister. M found me. Saw something in me, I guess. Went to school and stuff on government scholarship and all.”

“Figured.” Zayn blows the smoke out the window, where it joins the rest of the smog. It’s hot outside, but the air conditioner is working enough that Harry’s a little chilly, naked. He’d be fine if Zayn came back over here to warm him up.

“What about you?” Harry presses.

Zayn shrugs, and stubs out his cigarette. When he walks to Harry, it’s a predatory stalk, almost feline as he climbs on top of Harry, straddling him. “Because it was either this or go to jail,” he says, and kisses Harry hard enough he forgets he ever asked a question.

////

“Shut the door,” M says. Harry obeys, sits down. “I have an assignment for you.”

“I figured.” Harry glances around. “Are you telling Zayn later?”

“Malik isn’t in on this,” M says, and Harry stills. He hasn’t done a job without Zayn in what feels like ages. It’s…not a comfortable feeling, thinking he’s not going to be there. “And it isn’t going to be easy. But you’re the only one I have who can do this. Who I can trust to do this.”

Harry leans forward, meets her eyes. There is nothing he wouldn’t do for this woman, and they both know it. The bullet of her gun, she says sometimes, fondly, and Harry is. A bullet for a gun that only one person can shoot.

////

He thinks of Zayn, after the building blows. An empty building, but no one knows that. British bodies will be found, and Harry’s fingerprints on the trigger. He watches the flames rise, and thinks of Zayn. Wonders if he’ll see it. If he’ll touch the scar on his ribs and wonder if Harry would have put it there.

He never answered Harry’s question, he remembers. Now maybe he never will.

Harry turns his back on the flames, on London. He has a flight to catch.

////

Harry’s never minded being alone. He’s been alone since he was ten. There’s M, of course, but she’s different; and the other agents, Horan and Payne and—well, there used to be Tomlinson—but they aren’t friends, not really. He has himself, and that’s enough. This is just more of that. He watches the news footage, watches himself declared traitor to the crown, gone rogue. He sees M shake her head sadly, making a speech to Parliament, talking about how she has her best agents on him. In the background, where no one but an agent would notice them, he sees some of the others.

Horan is glaring at the ground, cursing; Payne’s face is twisted, clearly confused, not knowing how Harry could do this. Collins looks murderous. Hood is smiling, never liked her much.

Zayn isn’t there. Harry doesn’t know what that means. But he thinks this is what missing him might feel like.

////

Harry sees him once. He’s in Lahore, making contact with the man who will lead him to the woman who will lead him to the woman with the codes that could take down the British government. He doesn’t know why Zayn is there. He just knows that it’s a party, and he knows the quiet confidence and the easy saunter and the way he draws the eye without meaning to. Just like he knows the dark hair, shorter now than it was, like in the weeks since Harry left he buzzed it off then let it grow again, and the broad shoulders; knows how the ink on the back of his neck tastes. His hands twitch, wanting to touch, to feel.

Zayn turns, away from the man he’s talking to—not the mark, Zayn doesn’t talk to marks like that, is he flirting—and sweeps the crowd. Harry can see when their eyes meet, but Zayn’s face is mission blank. He wishes it weren’t. He wants him to come over, to scream at him, to put a gun to his head and threaten to shoot. He wants Zayn here.

Instead, Harry lifts his champagne, toasts him, then drinks. M wouldn’t. She wouldn’t tell him who she was setting after him, but—she wouldn’t. She doesn’t want him caught.

For a long moment, Zayn just looks at him. In this light, his eyes look brown, dark and deep, surrounded by his lashes. Something in Harry twists, relaxes. At the sight of Zayn, whole; at the sight of Zayn looking at him again.

Then Zayn looks away. He doesn’t look at Harry again that whole night. But he doesn’t have a tail when he leaves, and he’s not dragged back to England in chains. 

////

Harry breathes in London air six months after he leaves. It’s a brief breath only, and risky, but the meet had to be here. And the city looks better than he imagined.

////

He’s bleeding. He’s bleeding and he knows his head’s been hit hard enough that he’s probably concussed and he has a bullet hole in his arm and he doesn’t know—he can’t go to a hospital, and he can’t go to M, no contact there, but he’s in London and the instant his face is caught on CCTV the full might of the empire’s going to come down on him.

It’s desperation, probably. That sends him to MI6, or nearby. Maybe it’s going to the only home he’s ever known, but he doesn’t go inside. He’s in an alley, waiting, trying to stay conscious, until—

Harry reaches out an arm, grabs Zayn and pulls him into the alley. He’s off guard, here on home soil, the only reason Harry can get to him, but he’s whirling the instant Harry touches him and then Harry’s pushed to the ground, and Harry’s in too much pain to fight.

Zayn’s eyes are huge as he looks at him down the barrel of his gun, his mouth slightly open. “Harry?”

“Zayn.” Even in pain, Harry can feel how good it is to say that name again. To feel it in his mouth. “I swear, I didn’t go rogue, I need—I can’t go anywhere, but it’s all legit, I promise, just—” and his mouth forms this word too, this word he hasn’t formed for years and meant it. “Please. Help?”

Zayn blinks, then shoves his gun back into its holster. “Yeah,” he says, and reaches down. “Yeah. Come on.”

////

Zayn has a dog. It’s more disconcerting than Zayn having a flat, honestly. The flat’s in a nondescript neighborhood, in one of the more upscale buildings, probably for the security. It’s not dissimilar to what Harry would have, if he had a flat rather than the dormitories. But the barking from behind the door takes him by surprise. Harry goes to draw his gun, but Zayn rolls his eyes.

“It’s just Rhino,” he says, and types in the code to the electronic keypad, then uses the key. He holds the door open for Harry, who limps in. Then he presses a few more buttons on the alarm system inside the door, and kneels just in time for a pitbull puppy to jump on him.

Zayn laughs, ruffling the dog’s fur, and presses a kiss to the top of his head before he stands. Harry watches in amazement.

“You have a dog,” he points out.

“I do,” Zayn agrees. “Harry, this is Rhino. Rhino, Harry.”

Harry holds out his hand, because that’s what he thinks you’re supposed to do with dogs. Rhino sniffs at it suspiciously.

“What do you do with him when you’re on a mission?” Harry asks, holding his hand as steady as he can.

“I have a dogwalker. Niall takes care of him, or Liam.” Rhino apparently decides Harry’s trustworthy, and licks at his hand. “We make do. Don’t we, boy?” he coos at the puppy. Harry’s seen him kill a man with a shoelace, and he uses those hands to bring the puppy’s face closer to him to kiss its nose.

Rhino barks happily and Zayn lets him go, standing up. Something in him changes, not like he’s on a mission, but more like the Zayn Harry recognizes. The one he remembered.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” he says, and leads Harry into his flat.

////

It hurts. It burns, and Harry is used to pain but it doesn’t make it better. He focuses on Zayn’s face above his, set and grim, and the feeling of his hand on Harry’s skin after months without it. It’s for the mission, he thinks, and holds on.

////

There’s a spare room in the flat, but Zayn takes Harry to his room, and Harry follows without a word. It’s a warm room, almost cozy, with brightly colored walls and a few abstract paintings on them. On the dresser there’s a picture, of Zayn with a man and four women. He’s smiling, and it’s before he got into the business, Harry can tell. There’s no death in his eyes, in his hands.

“Your family?” Harry asks, and Zayn stills from where he’s digging out clothes.

“Yes,” he replies, and doesn’t say anything more.

Harry takes another look at the picture. He’s holding tight to one of the girls, one of his sisters, and there’s an innocence to him Harry’s never seen.

Harry sets the picture aside, and turns to Zayn. He doesn’t know that Zayn. He wouldn’t know what to say to him. This Zayn, whose hand doesn’t hesitate when stitching up a bullet wound—this is his.

///

“They’re why I’m here.”

It’s the next day. Zayn had gone to work; Harry had spent the day in his flat, trying not to pace. He knows he has to recover, and he can’t leave and return, can’t put Zayn or the mission at risk like that, but he hates being confined. Hates not being able to act.

So he’d made dinner, because he didn’t have anything else to do and he’s picked a thing or two up, over the years. Zayn’s jaw hadn’t dropped, when he came back to Harry in the kitchen, but his eyes had widened and then he’d smiled.

Then he’d said that, leaning against the wall, watching Harry stir.

“Hm?” Harry doesn’t tense, he doesn’t tense at anything, but he perks up.

“My family.” He’s looking at the window, out over the London skyline. “One of them—got into some trouble, with MI6. I was desperate, hacked in. Tried to get them out of the system. They noticed, of course, but I guess M was impressed.”

“Then why aren’t you in Q branch?”

Zayn shrugs, but something in his face twists. “M said it was a waste of a face like mine to keep it in Q. Especially,” he adds, something bitter in his voice. “When they speak fluent Urdu and Arabic and look Pakistani. Though she didn’t say that one to me.”

She wasn’t wrong. It would be a waste, and Harry wonders if there was something else M saw—the violence in his hands, the way his lips can twist and steal away secrets.

“It would be a waste,” Harry agrees, and sets down his spoon to press Zayn back against the wall, caging his body with Harry’s arms. Harry’s injured, weak, and he can see the thought flit through his face, how he could disable Harry, get out. But he doesn’t, just tilts his face up and kisses Harry back, until something bubbles on the stove and Zayn pushes him gently away.

“Don’t burn down my flat.”

“I don’t burn down buildings,” Harry objects. Zayn raises on eyebrow. “Not on accident,” he amends, and Zayn laughs.

////

Zayn comes home with a bruise on his neck and his knuckles rough and a wildness in his eyes Harry knows, Harry misses. He doesn’t ask, but there’s nothing careful about how they fuck that night, how viciously Harry bites over the bruise on his neck, makes it his.

///

“Why do you have a dog?” Harry asks. Rhino’s in bed with them, nuzzled up next to Zayn. Zayn’s petting him with one hand and tracing Harry’s moth with the other, and he keeps looking at the moth rather than Harry as he answers.

“I like the simplicity of it. I love him and he’ll love me back, absolutely. No questions asked.”   

“Love?” Harry echoes. It sounds wrong in his voice. “For people like us?”

“Yes.” Zayn’s gaze flicks up to Harry’s eyes, and Harry could swear they glow in the darkness. “Love.”

////

Maybe M made a mistake, Harry thinks, watching Zayn read on the couch, Rhino cuddled to his chest. Maybe she saw some things in him, that made him great. But maybe she missed others. Maybe she’s trying to make him into something he’s not.

Maybe Harry is too.

////

“Be good for your dad,” Harry tells Rhino. They’ve come to a friendly truce over the week he’s been here, and he barks happily when Harry pets him. Then Harry straightens, and looks at Zayn.

Zayn’s face is mission blank, like it was when Harry first saw him.

“Well, bye.” Harry swallows. He’s never cared enough to do good-byes. But he has a mission to get back to, and he’s healed enough. “Thank you.”

“Harry.” Suddenly Zayn’s there, kissing him hard and almost painful, biting at his lip to taste the blood, his fingers painfully tight in his hair. Harry grabs him back, digs into his shoulders, tries to bruise his lips, imprint himself into his body.

Then Zayn’s gone, stepping back. “Don’t die,” he warns, and picks up Rhino.

The flippant response is on the tip of Harry’s tongue. No promises, is what he’d say. Only in the line of duty, is what he’d tell M. But now—

“I’ll try,” he tells Zayn, and shuts the door.

////

He’s never missed any place before. London, but nowhere in it. His home is MI6, and the manor that had burned. Nowhere else.

But he lies in a bed with thousand count sheets and flirts with women in dresses worth thousands of dollars, and thinks about a dog.

////

“You don’t care about anyone,” the woman in his bed spits. Alicia, he thinks. It doesn’t much matter. She’s there because she had the entré, and she got him into the party. She’d been a good enough fuck, and he’s not entirely sure why she’s mad—he’d made it good for her, and he’d never promised anything. He never promises anything.

“I don’t,” he agrees. His fingers are pressing against a bullet scar in his arm, weeks healed.

////

He searches the hard drive more because it’s good habit than anything else. He found what he needed to here—the office is that of a midlevel arms dealer, but one of the people he deals with will give Harry his lead. It’s as much coincidence as anything he got in here when he did, as the dealer had run out in a hurry, but Harry’s not looking the gift horse in the mouth.

He skims over files, then checks emails.

The latest email is still open. Zayn’s face stares up at him, and under it—a name, and an address Harry knows.

He doesn’t think about the lead, doesn’t think about anything. He needs to get to London.

////

The plane ride is too long. Harry stares at the window, like he can make it go faster. The arms dealer Zayn let get away, he thinks, so many months ago. And now—revenge? A contract? He doesn’t know, doesn’t care. He just needs to get there.

////

The door’s open when Harry gets to the building, the keypad ripped out, the alarm disabled. There’s blood on the floor, and Harry stares. Blood. A lot of blood. Because Zayn wouldn’t kill that kitten, because he’d let him get away, because M was wrong and he shouldn’t have been here and now there’s blood on the floor and Harry is going to find this man and kill everything he ever cared about, slowly and painfully and in front of him, before he kills him.

It’s the bark that saves him. He spins, and catches the arm holding the knife before it can strike. An angry face he recognizes from surveillance glares at him, then Harry throws him away. Good, Harry thinks, as he punches at his face. He can kill him now. Can kill him here in Zayn’s flat and watch him suffer.

The arms dealer strikes back, and Harry vaguely hears barking, sees Rhino’s bloody teeth, as they grapple for knife. The wall hits Harry’s back, then he pushes back, and they stumble, their arms still locked together, and Harry will drive that bloody knife into his throat if it kills him.

Except he hasn’t slept, and the knife is inching closer to his face, and, well, he tried, Zayn, but he’d never made Zayn promise and he should have. And this man will die. If Harry has to die for it to happen, he will.

He lets go with one hand, so he can reach for the gun he knows Zayn keeps under the sideboard. The knife descends faster, but if Harry can just get the gun—

The gunshot’s deafening in the confined space. Harry sees it in slow motion, sees the bullet hit the dealer’s temple, sees the knife clatter to the floor, sees him fall. Turns.

Zayn’s leaning against the wall from his bedroom, one hand clutching his side, red seeping between his fingers, the other holding the gun. Alive. Very alive, and with cold eyes and his lips set implacably.

Harry pulls out the gun, finally, and puts two more bullets in the dead man’s head. Then he drops the gun, and crosses the room to cradle Zayn’s face in his hands, kissing him like a man just come from the desert. Zayn’s still holding the gun as he wraps his hand around Harry, the butt knocking against his neck, and Harry tastes the blood in his mouth before he feels Zayn sagging in his arms.

Blood loss. Harry ignores Rhino’s frantic barking, lays Zayn down on the couch, and rips his shirt off for an impromptu bandage. Then he grabs Zayn’s phone from his pocket, and dials a number he knows well.

“M,” he snaps, before she can say anything. “You have an injured agent and a situation.”

He hangs up, and sits on the couch next to Zayn. Rhino jumps into his lap, and he runs his hand over his fur. Zayn is very still, and very pale, but he’s breathing.

“Good boy,” Harry murmurs to the dog. His teeth are bloody, to match Harry’s hands. “We’ll keep him safe, won’t we?” 

////

“You compromised the mission,” M tells him. They’re in her flat, not her office, but that doesn’t make her voice any less stern.

Harry leans forward, braces his hands on his knees. “Yes,” he says, not hesitating. Zayn is in the infirmary, and M’s assured him he’s recovering. “I did.”

She looks at him, long and hard. He looks back. There’s no room for regrets, but he has none anyway.

“Not incurably,” she says at last, leaning back in her armchair. “Get back to it.”

“M—”

“I’ll look after him,” she snaps. She’s already picked up her newspaper. “Go.”

Harry nods, and gets up. He’s at the door when she adds. “And don’t let it happen again.”

Harry looks back. She’s reading her paper, not looking at Harry. “It won’t,” he lies.

He thinks he sees M smile, before he leaves.

////

“So I hear you’re a hero now.”

Harry shrugs. “I’ve always been a hero.”

“I didn’t doubt you,” Horan avers. Payne laughs, elbows him.

“You did. You had some creative torture ideas.”

“I did not!” Horan protests, and Zayn laughs. He’s sitting next to Harry, sprawled out on his couch, and he’s tracing a scar on Harry’s hip in the sort of measured motion that means Harry’s going to be kicking the other agents out very soon. But right now, the TV’s playing quietly now that the announcement of Harry’s mission is done, and he’s back in London, petting Rhino’s head, and he has Zayn next to him. Even the other agents are fine, here.

“Zayn didn’t doubt, did you?” Horan says, and Payne rolls his eyes.

“Well, of course not. He wouldn’t.”

“And why is that?” Harry asks, mostly joking.

Zayn looks at him through his lashes. “Don’t you know?”

He thinks he does.

////

Rio. Carnival spreads out beneath the party, and inside the wine is flowing freely. Harry is nursing a martini at the bar, watching, when the seat next to him is filled.

“Buy you a drink?” a rich, north country voice asks.

Harry grins at him. His tie is slightly askew, but he’s smirking, and Harry doesn’t need the way he pats his pocket to know he has it.

“Why don’t we skip the drink?” Harry proposes, and Zayn laughs as they circle the party, slipping out separate entrances.

Christ the Redeemer is in the distance when Harry gets to the Ferrari. Zayn’s leaning against it, all lean and trim, and Harry has to kiss him, taste the blood on his split lip. Zayn grabs him back, presses him against the car, until Harry thinks he could come here, from this.

In the distance, he hears shouting, then pounding feet.

“Well?” he asks, grinning at Zayn.

Zayn tosses the keys to him, and smoothly pulls a gun out from under his suit, cocking it with the sort of casual competence he uses to touch Harry. He grins back at Harry, knife sharp.

“You drive.”


End file.
